Liberation Woes, Possible Band-Aid?

[Grifter]

Rather than hijacking the other thread, I thought I would suggest an alternative to our Liberation frustrations here.

Given that Liberation Syria is proving to be so difficult to manage. Perhaps we want to table it and work on it as a side project until we can work the kinks out? I'm making this suggestion not to disparage anyone's hard work on Liberation Syria, but clearly we're all very busy and getting Liberation to work properly is going to take more time than a week. If our goal is to fly realistically (ahem, real life gaming), and have fun doing so, we'll need a viable mission in the mean time. Having an alternative may allow us the time we need to work more on Liberation in the background and get it the way we want it. We can then circle back around to it.

So that leads me to my next point: Bones is right! Our best flying experience has been when we were building and posting our own missions in the forums, and then flying them as a package in one Surrexen's campaigns. These were some of our most successful mission by any metric: survivability, kill rate, destroying primary and secondary objectives, REALISM, and most importantly, they were FUN! Yes, it was fun to fly the sim as realistically as we could, without becoming unnecessarily rigid, using real tactics that produced a more realistic and fun experience. RLG ™ , my friends! We should create package missions and fly them. I'm happy to step in and write some up.

The problem with Surrexen's latest missions is that he decided to add AI General. Essentially, the AI sends Cargo plans out to land at enemy airbases, simulating that the base has been taken by the enemy. We don't have the power to man a CAP perpetually tasked to destroy cargo plans when there is only 5-8 of us on at one time, and we want to fly as a package. This means that we can only fly his older missions, and we've kind of played those to death.

Just a thought: I wonder if an ultra-wide trigger zone could be set up in Surrexen's latest Syria mission, and then have two to four F-14's spawn specifically tasked with killing the enemy cargo planes. We could also have two to four MiG's do the same for the blue cargo planes. I don't think we can strip out the AI Generals; I've asked Hammer about that before and he said they were too integrated. Does anyone think this is viable? Maybe I'll ask on Hoggit.

Otherwise, we could go back to flying PG or Caucauses using Surrexen's missions, or use TTI. The problem with TTI is that it doesn't automatically spawn opposing aircraft and the AWACS alerts you of their presence in big print on the right hand side of the screen. Very unrealistic. Let me know what you guys think.

[Grifter]

Turns out there is in fact a solution to this problem. Surrexen wrote back! Here’s my question on hoggit and Surrexen’s answer.

I followed up with him and hopefully he or someone else will respond. But, even if he doesn’t, we have a viable solution that makes Surrexen’s 2.7 missions playable! We could fly this whole a bunch of us continue to work on making Liberation more useable and practical for our purposes. I’m certainly willing to help edit the Surrexen’s mission or work on the Liberation team. I’m also happy to help with writing package missions for the Surrexen mission.

What do you guys think? I know Hammer has experience editing the Surrexen missions. Maybe he and I can see on TS3 and screen share, walk me through it?

[Hammer]

The issue with that is, it "prevents the red general from doing *anything*...). that means also no red air. i would have to dig into the scripts some more.

"If you do that, it will prevent the red general from doing anything (troop transports/helo's/SEAD/CAS planes etc)."

[Cr33p3r]

Good stuff Grifter!

I will help Trichome with liberation stuff since I'm becoming more and more familiar with that. i also just stepped down from helping a Arma server to dedicate more time to RLG!

Also, depending on what mission we run and how the in-game awacs works, I don't mind functioning as ATC and AWACS while you guys practice and train this coming monday evening.

[Xpendable]

I am also willing to help dig under the covers and help with mission editing and what not. I am also a programmer by trade and can help dig into any custom scripting if need be. I also have access to a bunch of MVP guys that are well versed in DCS mission scripting. They have built missions for their WWII events and other events such as pylon racing, helicopter cargo life challenges, etc.

[Trichome]

Hey everyone....

Liberation and I have spent some time together this weekend (bless my wife...lol) and I did finally manage to get access to post a question on Discord. I was essentially told our issue comes down to money. I mentioned what I had tried previously about deleting flights in the ME, setting the fuel to 0% - none of which worked and I was told - its the money.

So I tried a couple things budget and multiplier wise....(same factions /same campaign)
We can amend these factors and keep testing.

TEST 1
Coalition Multiplier 3.5%
Enemy Multiplier 0%
Coalition Budget $4000
Enemy Budget $1500 *

Results:
Runayshid - - 0 flights
H3 Southwest - Mig 29 - 24 flights
H4 - Mig 29 - 12 flights
H3 - Mig 25 - 24 flights

60 Aircraft total (auto assigned in the first turn)



TEST 2
Coalition Multiplier 3.5%
Enemy Multiplier 0%
Coalition Budget $4000
Enemy Budget $1000 *

Results:
Runayshid - - 0 flights
H3 Southwest - Mig 29 - 12 flights
H4 - Mig 29 - 12 flights
H3 - Mig 25 - 12 flights

36 aircraft total (auto assigned in the first turn)



TEST 3
Coalition Multiplier 3.5%
Enemy Multiplier 0.1% *
Coalition Budget $4000
Enemy Budget $800 *

Results:
Runayshid - - 0 flights
H3 Southwest - Mig 29 - 6 flights
H4 - Mig 29 - 6 flights
H3 - Mig 25 - 6 flights
Khalkhalah - Mig 29 - 6 flights
H3 Northwest - Mig 29 - 6 flights

30 aircraft total (auto assigned in the first turn)

* changed between the TESTs

These enemy flights are not all at once. Some are 50nm to 100+nm at least in distance
We can amend the multipliers lower for us
We can set it to 0% for the enemy but I dont recommend it because I was seeing intel that said "Enemy Economy in Ruins" when I did that
When I started the campaign the first time I dont recall the exact amount I set for the enemy budget but the intel said - Economic Strength - Slight DIS-advantage. After TEST 3 it says - Strong ADVANTAGE.

I think this will be key.... Let me know what you guys think and maybe we can chat on Monday

[Grifter]

This sounds like a viable means of controlling Liberation, Trichome! Awesome find! Hopefully, it will solve most of our problems. I will also work this week on editing the Surexxen Scarlet Dawn mission so that we can pivot to it if we continue to have problems with Liberation, or simply wish to play it in the future.

Xpen, certainly would welcome your help on editing the Scarlet Dawn mission if I run into trouble. But everyone is so busy. If I can find time to do this, I want to try. My way of contributing to the group! I'll probably screw it up and ask for your help at some point. ;-)

Anyway, I think these are all very good developments. :-)